Warren, MI Parking Rules: Abandoned Vehicles (2026)

Sec. 22-72 covers two related problems: unauthorized entry into private parking areas and vehicles abandoned on private property. Subsection (a) makes it a misdemeanor for a person to drive into a private parking area without the express or implied permission of the owner, lessee, occupant, or agent, and subsection (b) defines vehicle broadly to include any self-propelled vehicle capable of transporting people, materials, or goods, with or without attached apparatus. Subsection (c) defines private parking area as a lot to which the public has access, with or without a fee, for parking, and private property as anything not owned by any branch of government.

Subsection (d) is the operative abandonment rule: a vehicle, occupied or not, that remains on private property without the owner's consent is an abandoned vehicle. Before the section applies to a given lot, subsection (e) requires suitable signs warning an ordinarily observant person of the restricted use; those signs then establish implied permission only for the use the signs describe. Subsection (f) lets the private property owner have an abandoned vehicle taken into custody by contacting either a local towing agency (one with a storage lot within fifteen miles of the city border) or the Warren Police Department.

Subsections (g) and (h) let owners obtain official no-parking-after-hours signs from the Public Service Department at city hall, after signing an authorization and release form; posting that city-issued sign counts as the owner's standing complaint and authorizes police-ordered towing after normal business hours. 252a, sections 12 through 21, whenever a vehicle is actually removed.